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Christo, Max had forgotten that salient detail. How must she have felt when he hadn’t returned home? He’d simply forgotten. It was only afterwards that someone else had commented on the importance of the date and he’d realised…
“No, I can’t blame her even for that,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Alessia is –,” Gabe was uncharacteristically thoughtful, searching for the right words. “Important to all of us.”
Massimo’s chest lifted with a wave of affection and then crushed with a sense of responsibility.
“She was devastated when your marriage ended.”
Both Fiero and Massimo fixed inquiring gazes on Gabe’s face.
“I ran into her in Ondechiara about six months after you split. She was like a shell. Devastated doesn’t come close to describing her. It was like looking at the ocean with all the water sucked out of it.” He shook his head, returning Massimo’s gaze with a hint of accusation simmering in the depths of his own gaze. “I took her back to her villa, stuck around for the afternoon. I can’t say why. I just didn’t feel like she should be alone.”
And despite the kindness of that confession, and the fact Alessia had grown up as a part of all their lives, Massimo felt a wave of blinding jealousy spread through him, bitter and vile. Gabe was, as the press had lovingly termed him, a ‘billionaire bachelor’. He made an art form of sleeping with just about any beautiful woman that moved. The idea of him alone with Alessia sent arrows of panic sailing through Massimo’s blood.
“Calm down,” Gabe laughed, rough and hoarse sounding. Fiero joined in. “Don’t be paranoid. I love Alessia, but Christo, do you think I’d be so messed up I’d sleep with your ex-wife?”
Massimo’s eyes shut for a moment. He was being ridiculous. “Of course not.” He knew that wasn’t the case.
“I care about her. And I care about you.”
The admission surprised Max. Not the sentiment – he knew how Gabe felt about him, but Gabe was, usually, a man of few words.
“I just wonder if you’re not a bit like oil and water.”
Fiero’s brows drew together. “What are you saying?”
Gabe lifted his shoulders. “Your first marriage was a dismal failure. You were both burned by the way it ended.” Max rejected that. He’d been disappointed he hadn’t been able to make it work, and he’d been furious that Alessia had been cheating behind his back – or so he’d believed – but he hadn’t been burned. Why would Gabe say he had been?
Fiero leaned closer. “And the way you are now – It seems like you’re still harbouring hurts from her infidelity.”
“I told you, she didn’t cheat.”
“Even the kiss –,”
“No.” Massimo’s eyes swept shut. “That wasn’t her fault. None of it was.” When he opened his eyes, there was a bleakness in his expression. “But I was so angry.”
“No shit,” Gabe poured another scotch, but didn’t drink from it. Instead, he cradled the glass thoughtfully in his hand.
“I cut her out of my life without giving her a chance to explain.”
Silence fell.
“But it’s all forgotten now,” Fiero said finally. “You’ve obviously reunited.”
Massimo grimaced in acknowledgement.
The meaning was clear – reuniting didn’t mean all was forgiven and forgotten.
Max shook his head. “For five years I have been so angry with her and she did nothing wrong.” He stared straight ahead, not seeing either brother. “It was all me. Every bit of blame lands at my feet.”
Another protracted silence surrounded them. The happy, merry noises of the adjacent room seemed to be in an alternate galaxy.
“When I learned the truth about Jack,” Fiero said eventually, referring to his young son. “I was furious with Elodie. How could she have had a child and not told me about him?” He shook his head with his own sense of self-recrimination. “It was easier to be angry than it was to look at my own faults, to see my own errors.”
“We were all too hard on Elodie,” Max muttered.
“You were hard on her out of a desire to protect me.”
